Dems woes aren't ending

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In victory, magnanimity. So said
Winston Churchill, and after this
month's elections, Mitch Bainwol,
executive director of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee
(NRSC), is so Churchillian that his
overflowing magnanimity extends
even to Sen. James Jeffords of
Vermont.

Jeffords's defection from the
Republican Party in May 2001 gave
the Democrats control of the
Senate. "He gets a supporting actor
award, at the very least," Bainwol
says, because Democratic control
allowed the 2002 campaign to be
about Democratic obstructionism
rather than the economy.

Bainwol was Sancho Panza to
Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist's Don Quixote in what turned out to be a not-at-all
quixotic attempt by Frist, the chairman of the NRSC, to reestablish
Republican control of the Senate. Now Bainwol believes that the Democrats
may be locked into minority status in the Senate for many years, during which
the number of Republican seats is apt to reach the high 50s.

If Suzanne Haik Terrell defeats Mary Landrieu, the Democratic incumbent, in
Louisiana's Dec. 7 runoff, Republicans will have 52 seats. And Republican
ascendancy will, Bainwol thinks, accelerate in 2004. Then Democrats will be
defending 19 seats, Republicans only 15 -- and the political geography will
heavily favor the Republicans.

Nine of the Republican seats are in Bush country. Seven are in states he
carried by 15 or more points: Alabama, 15 points (Richard Shelby);
Kentucky, 15 (Jim Bunning); Kansas, 21 (Sam Brownback); Oklahoma, 22
(Don Nickles); Alaska, 31 (a seat soon to be filled with a replacement for
Frank Murkowski, who was elected Alaska's governor on Nov. 5); Utah, 40
(Robert Bennett); Idaho, 40 (Mike Crapo). And Republicans will be
defending two other seats in states Bush carried by more than five points:
Arizona, 6 (John McCain); and Colorado, 8 (Ben Nighthorse Campbell).

If Hollings, who will be 82 on Election Day 2004, retires, this probably will
mean Republicans will gain his seat. And they would be apt to gain another --
how long can the anomaly of two Democratic senators from South Dakota
continue? -- if Daschle retires, either to run for president or (in Bainwol's
phrase) "to become Bob Strauss" (the former Democratic Party leader who
has had an extraordinarily lucrative career as a lawyer-lobbyist since leaving
politics). Furthermore, if Hollings or Daschle or any other Democrat from a
state in Bush country announces his retirement soon, that could trigger other
such decisions by Democrats watching the prospect of majority status recede.

Edwards can run simultaneously for president and senator, but he may have a
better chance of winning the presidential nomination than of being reelected in
North Carolina. And he might lose both by trying to do both, because moving
left to appeal to the nominating electorate would make his reelection race
even more difficult.

This year's elections confirmed the Republicans' conception of their ideal
Senate candidates: experienced public officials (e.g. Elizabeth Dole in North
Carolina, Jim Talent in Missouri, Norm Coleman in Minnesota) who are so
well defined in the state's mind that they are insulated from Democrats'
attempts to define them with negative advertising. Democrats may of necessity
have a different ideal candidate.

It is telling that the new chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign
Committee (DSCC) probably will be New Jersey's freshman Jon Corzine,
who spent $63 million of his own money getting elected two years ago.
Corzine is the prototype of what the Democrats need -- self-financing
candidates. Both parties adore such candidates, but, says Bainwol,
Democrats especially crave them because of the new campaign finance law
for which Democrats were cheerleaders.

That law bans "soft money" -- large unregulated contributions to the parties
that can be spent for issue ads and other party-building measures. No one
knows where the streams of soft money the NRSC and DSCC have raised
($59 million and $96 million, respectively, for 2002) will flow in 2004. Not all
of it -- not even most of it -- will leave politics. It will reenter through various
groups independent of the national parties.

However, the law increases the importance of "hard dollars" (regulated
contributions to specific campaigns and political committees), and
Republicans do better than Democrats at raising them. So the Democrats'
selection of Senate candidates will be skewed to the pursuit of the rich.

If Bainwol is prescient, he is going to have many occasions for magnanimity.